46 Replies - 13769 Views - Last Post: 15 September 2012 - 06:02 PM

Re: Is a computer science degree worth the paper it's printed on?

Posted 13 September 2012 - 02:07 PM

In my department at the BBC, here in the UK, we have a graduate software engineer programme. Each year I am constantly surprised at the quality of the graduates that we hire. But I don't think that this is because they have learned a lot from their degree. It is because a large proportion of the UK's high school leavers go on to university, and so the job market is flooded with graduates. Therefore we get hundreds of applicants for every graduate software engineer hired, and so only the best of the best get through.

For standard roles, we generally hire mid-career engineers, who usually have CS or engineering degrees, and have about 4/5 years experience. So I think having a CS degree improves their chances, but it doesn't replace the requirement for experience.

So I think that having a degree is helpful, but it's only a small part of the requirements for a professional software engineer.

Re: Is a computer science degree worth the paper it's printed on?

Posted 15 September 2012 - 06:02 PM

I actually don't think a degree is worth anything today. I have a genuine interest in the field and I'm fairly good at it (3'rd best in my class of 30). I have quite a lot of experience and i get a lot of good critique from my part-time employers. However, i cant get a job because i don't have the level of degree they are looking for, even if i could easily do what they want me to do and more.

Sadly the poor grade summation system really doesn't help either the employers nor the employees since the employees may be great at art but lack fundamental IT knowledge, or vise versa.

Sorry, meant to add that i live in Sweden and we have a different system here.